My friend who has played the game before, on an earlier build says that Mamlukes are better, although from personal experience, it seems that the Swadian Knights are better. Just looking for some more opinions! Thanks

The swadian knights are the best actually. They are kick butt at charging and breaking lines (except for rhodok pikes). The only thing mamlukes have over the swadians is their ability to harass the enemies once the line is broken.
Knights: charge, break,run like an olympic athletes
Mamluke: Harass, archer's worst enemy

This should help
Swadians: Best calvary
Sarrandians: Best archers
Nords: Best warriors
Rhodoks: Best spearmen
Vaegirs: All around evened men, heavily armored
Kerghits: horse archers

I agree with all you say, save for the sarranids having the best archers. I say they are balanced with the vaegirs' archers. The sarranids are matched arrow for arrow against the vaegirs. The big difference is the build of the close combat troops which are more or less counterparts to the other nation.

I agree with all you say, save for the sarranids having the best archers. I say they are balanced with the vaegirs' archers. The sarranids are matched arrow for arrow against the vaegirs. The big difference is the build of the close combat troops which are more or less counterparts to the other nation.

My friend who has played the game before, on an earlier build says that Mamlukes are better, although from personal experience, it seems that the Swadian Knights are better. Just looking for some more opinions! Thanks

IMO:

Best Cavalry: Sarranid's Mamlukes. More durable than the Swadian Knights and slightly cheaper. On the other paw, they take longer to train up and the preceding types are weaker. The Vaegir Knights train up fastest and are the cheapest.

Best Archers: Vaegir Master Archers. Which is why I never use them. I usually use either Rhodok Sharpshooters, who are the best missile troops and very good medium infantry in their own right or Khergit Horse Archers (despite the description, a significant % will be armed with Javelins not bows). Archers are great targets though, I absolutely love them... when they are on the other side.

Best Infantry: Rhodok Sharpshooters. No, not Huscarls. Huscarls are the best when it comes to close quarters and not the best everywhere else. I like to reach out and kill people so I don't want troops with slow, big 2H axes and NO shields. Not just targets, but expensive AND slow.

But this sort of 'Top 10' thing is moot at best, dumb at worst. Ever try the mercenaries at the taverns? THEY are the best. They are also the slowest by far to recruit (although I'm sure your recruiters don't mind visiting every tavern, repeatedly). Where else can you get troops that wear Plate armor, neutral (see how long your Mamlukes stick with you when you start attacking Sarranid forces, even for self-defence) and the only female militant forces in the game.

Just make up your own mind, based on your own experience. I can easily tell the play styles (and even difficulty levels) of most of the above posters (and obviously you can tell what MINE is ^-*)

I understand that the vaegirs have a warbow, but it sacrifices speed for power where the nomad/short bow for the sarranids are much faster. I would say this balances them.

Not really. All of the missile troops carry about the same number of bolts or arrows. That means that after about 5 minutes of constant shooting, the archers have become light infantry with no shields. Worse, bolts do more damage (because even the best archers have mediocre PDs), in fact about twice as much because their higher damage per hit means more of bolt's power carries over the armor's resistance factor. Against heavy armor (knights, top tier mercs), crossbows are probably 4x as effective even with the lower rate of fire. I've seen AI x-bows routinely knock shields off.

Comparing the bow using missile troops, they all suffer the great handicap of a low archery skill (120-140, i.e. they miss sitting ducks at point blank range, half the time), low PD (jarate-poor damage per shot), tendency to stand up straight and stationary (at least crossbow users 'duck', spending 1/3 of their time bent-over, mooning their commander) making them the natural targets. (edit the troops txt file and give arrows [bows actually] the same damage as bolts, now THAT is arrow damage ^-^)

About the only situations where the AI bow missile troops come out ahead is when rate of fire is more important (i.e. when you are molesting looters and easy bandits) or when strategic speed is needed (and that means KHAs and ONLY KHAs).

In fact, rather than looking at their bows... look at their other gear. Take a close look at the Nord archers. That's the kind of infantry that can take on Sharpshooters and still lose but by a small margin.